Nephthys stared out, her vision piercing the fog. A great stampede of monsters charged across the Crater, kicking up a storm of blackened dust, like a fire raging across the land and belching black smoke.
There were towering obsidian cyclops charging with crashstone clubs. Magma wyrms, some terrible cross between an earthworm and a crocodile, burrowed through the ground, leaving trails of molten rock in their wakes.
There were even a few racknas, illusive flame salamanders filled to the brim with valuable materials.
“W-what are we gonna do?” Tara muttered.
“Do?” Ramose replied, glancing at her.
“To…you know…defend against all those monsters,” Tara clarified.
“Why would we do anything?” he asked, sounding genuinely confused.
The two stared at each other, neither understanding the other. The moment of confusion lasted a few seconds before Hannibal broke it.
“Nemesis was built to survive an assault from legions of demigods. A monster stampede is barely an annoyance, let alone a threat. They would break upon the mountainside, never breaching even this outer gate,” he said, his explanation dry and assured rather than boastful.
“Indeed. Dregs are dregs, whether one or a thousand,” Ramose confirmed.
Tara looked between the three: Nephthys, who continued to stare at the cloud in the distance, Ramose, hands clasped calmly behind his back, and Hannibal, who casually leaned over the railing.
“Oh, okay,” she said, seemingly deflating.
“Hannibal,” Nephthys said. He straightened and thumped a fist against his chest. “Send Leonidas and the lieutenants to deal with the stampede. Send Horemheb after the instigators. We tolerated their investigatory strike, but this is not something we can take on the chin without response.”
“Right away, my lady,” Hannibal declared, a blue flame surrounding him.
Before he disappeared entirely, Nephthys glanced at him.
“I understand they are demons and pent up after two centuries of isolation. However, instruct them not to overdo it,” she said.
Hannibal nodded with a small smile as he vanished, seemingly consumed by the blue flames.
“A wise choice, my lady. Any of us would, of course, restrain any earthly desire to fulfill our duties, but I am sure they will appreciate the opportunity to let loose after so long,” Ramose said.
Nephthys once again resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She would eventually have to address this with Ramose. While he was competent and capable, she had no desire to be surrounded by sycophants.
Five figures suddenly appeared before the gate, four in the familiar shape of wrongly-proportioned muscles bulging beneath black armor, while one stood a head taller than the others.
Leonidas was a demon duke, the highest rank of demon, below only the Archdemon, of which there was only one at a time. Titles for dukes were many: pitlords, archfiends, and many other nefarious-sounding monikers, but the key was that they were the peak, the pinnacle of demon-kind. Only an archdemon could command them, and lesser demons would recognize their might and authority instinctively.
Leonidas, though his real name was Nuthabaal, had fiery skin that looked perpetually wet, as if he was constantly covered in blood. He had four horns, two that shot straight from his forehead, curling slightly back, and two that jutted out from the sides of his head, curving back at a near-ninety-degree angle. They pulsed with a red light, shining through the crevices between the horns’ ribs and nodules.
His eyes tapered vertically, as if human eyes were turned ninety degrees. His sclera were black, his irises red. His pupils were slitted, and they had what seemed like little spikes or channels that split off from them, as if his pupils were cracks in the ground.
His fangs speared through his closed lips, and his expression was usually one of displeasure. He wore armor to match the others, though his had spikes on the pauldrons that curled back, matching his horns. He had sharp spikes emerging from his forearms as well, extending to the ends of his hands, which looked ready, eager to gouge flesh.
He strode at the head of the group, his massive ax sheathed on his back. When they were a hundred feet away, they took off like lightning. Their strides were long, covering dozens of feet each. They split off from each other, each heading in a different direction. The demons seemed to be creating a five-pointed perimeter that encompassed the entire mile-or-so area before Nemesis.
“Ah, well…I do not know that the Pentagram is the…most restrained option. Should I correct them, my lady?” Ramose asked.
“The Pentagram is a contained magic that deals no damage outside its radius. It is perfectly reasonable, given the circumstances. Destruction contained to a specific area is the most restraint one could hope from violence-starved demons,” Nephthys replied.
As she spoke, the five demons halted their advance, standing straight and holding their arms before them. They held their hands before their chests, their palms facing each other, and an orb of blue fire manifested between them. The blue fire spread in a line down to the ground, where it shot across the cracked rock, as if a spreading brush fire.
“I see. You trust their sensibilities far more than I, my lady,” Ramose said, his face glowing with a blue light from the inferno that began to blaze in the distance.
———————————————————————
Flint sighed, watching the dust cloud grow distant. Finally, it was over. Gathering all those monsters together was grueling work, and not just physically. One could not be so close to danger for so long without suffering mental damage, and the toll was severe.
He rubbed his eyes, wincing as the flesh stretched, burned raw by proximity to such powerful, heat-emitting monsters.
He swayed slightly on his feet, the exhaustion catching up immediately after the threat to his life ended. It had taken days, and everyone in their entire clan, to gather up so many monsters and aim them at Nemesis. Most were far stronger than they were, which added another layer of difficulty. The monsters would not be spooked by any meager powers the clan could display.
They had to use the creatures’ natural instincts to avoid threats in the volcanic landscape, using magic and strength to shake the ground and spray steam. Mimicking the region's earthquake and geyser signs worked almost too well. The monsters fled as if their lives depended on it, which they probably did when volcanoes erupted unexpectedly in this hellscape.
The first few attempts to scare them worked well, but they were just tests. They sent a few clansmen to perform them, but they failed to account for the severity of the monsters’ fear. They darted in all directions as fast as they could.
Carga lost nearly half the clan to these tests: to trampling, to monsters so afraid, they attack anyone and anything nearby, and even to ground collapsing and landslides from the ruckus the fleeing monsters caused.
Counterintuitively, as confidence in Carga’s plan and leadership waned, his influence waxed. Clans in the Strip were centered around strength. One could only survive as long as one could defend oneself, and the threats in the Crater were far more severe than those in the Strip.
Their only hope of surviving long enough to make it back rested with Carga’s strength, and that only became truer as their numbers dwindled.
Their remaining members clustered firmly around Carga, fiercely loyal—for now, while they were still in the Crater.
“The fuck’re you restin’ for, Flint? We gotta base to loot. Those monsters are gonna make a mess of the place. Need to get in and out before they smash it to the ground—” Carga started.
A bright blue light suddenly flashed, blowing the debris cloud in the distance away like dust wiped off a table. A column of blue flames shot into the sky, swirling like a tornado, scorching the ground below it to glass.
The sound took a couple of seconds to reach them, hitting the group like a shockwave. The roar was almost deafening, as if a great beast was angered.
“What the—” Flint started, but his breath was taken by the appearance of a ghostly figure.
It floated before Carga, perhaps only three feet tall, yet floating at eye-level with him. It was obscured by a black robe, tattered at the bottom and sleeves. The hood was up, and rather than covering a face, there seemed to be nothing but a dark void within.
The robe hung down, fluttering in the fierce wind kicked up by the blue pyre beyond. There were no legs or appendages hanging from the robe, nor from its sleeves. It was as if the robe itself were possessed, bereft of an inhabitant.
“Who the fuck are—” Carga spat, drawing his ax.
A torrent of black smoke poured from the floating robe, both sleeves, the hood, and the bottom, belching the stuff. Carga screamed, a blood-curdling thing that chilled Flint to his bones. The flesh seemed to vanish from his body, his skeleton exposed within seconds by the spray of insects.
That was the identity of the smoke, Flint realized with horror: so many insects clustered together that they seemed a single morass. The surrounding clan members wasted no time, immediately fleeing, none making it more than a few steps before they, too, succumbed to the ravenous swarm.
Flint was transfixed, so terrified that his legs had frozen. He had spent days coralling monsters and beasts that could slaughter him with a stray swipe, yet this insect-wielding robe had his knees shaking, his feet stuck to the ground.
The robe turned its head toward him, and he gazed into the abyss within its hood in horror, his meager, unfulfilled life flashing through his mind. It was short, pathetic. He had done nothing, achieved nothing, and now he would die as no one, unremembered.
With a flick of the creature’s arm, Flint’s vision darkened.
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